Farmers in Maharashtra are currently facing significant challenges due to heavy rains, particularly in the Marathwada and Vidarbha areas, over the past months. According to  reports, it is believed that 144 lakh hectares of sown land this year, with crops of around 70 lakh hectares, were affected by excess rain and flooding. This amounts to 50% of the state agriculture damaged this kharif season.

Until September 29,86 persons have died in the flood across the state, with 11,500 persons taken to rehabilitation camps in Marathwada alone, as per a Frontline report. According to the State Disaster Management Authority, 10 people have died in September alone. The heavy rain heavily affects all the major cities of the Marathwada region and has led to heavy soil erosion in the region, intensifying agrarian distress. 

The situation, because of heavy rains, has deteriorated to such an extent in some areas that assistance of the army was sought to save the lives of the people. Farmers across the region are hoping for the state to declare a ‘wet drought’ to provide relief, similar to the declaration in 2022 when heavy rainfall impacted agriculture across Maharashtra. 

The unpredictability of rainfall, exacerbated by climate change, has been a persistent issue within rural development programmes. States across India, including Maharashtra, have recognised the risks associated with climate change and have taken proactive measures to address them.

Maharashtra is a leader in implementing the Programme on Climate Resilient Agriculture (PoCRA), also known as the Nanaji Deshmukh Krishi Sanjeevani Prakalp. This multi-million dollar programme ($600 million) was initiated in 2016 by the Maharashtra government in partnership with the World Bank. The aim of this programme is to equip farmers to adopt sustainable agricultural practices that can better cope with climate variability. It emphasises the use of appropriate agricultural technologies, water conservation, and modifications to farming practices to mitigate the impact of fluctuating rainfall on agricultural productivity.

In light of the current crisis and the growing demand for declaring a wet drought, it is essential to revisit the programme and understand why, despite its existence, we have found ourselves in such a problematic situation twice in a short span of two years. 

While the PoCRA programme aims to promote technology adoption and sustainable practices among farmers to address climate variations, in practice, it has become focused primarily on capital-intensive technologies. This includes the construction of farm ponds, large shade nets, food storage structures, and purchasing machinery such as tractors and harvesters to enable farmers to cultivate higher-value crops. While some water conservation technologies are included, the end goal is paradoxically to move farmers towards more water intensive crops. 

At the same time, the distribution of these benefits has not been equitable among farmers. The primary beneficiaries tend to be medium and large landholders who possess the capital, land and networks to effectively invest in new cropping strategies.

Our research across Maharashtra, however, indicates that many small landholding farmers can only access minor benefits from schemes like PoCRA, such as sprinklers and drip irrigation. The higher-value technologies such as shade nets, machinery and farm ponds remain out of reach owing to their high upfront investment costs. 

In the case of farm ponds, for example, smaller farmers struggle to allocate a portion of their limited land for pond construction. Furthermore, while subsidies are typically available, the initial investment required to develop these structures is significant and smaller farmers cannot afford the prolonged wait – sometimes up to two years – for the subsidy to be disbursed.

Consequently, to construct a farm pond would require many small landholding farmers to rely on borrowed money from informal sources, often at high interest rates. At the same time, there are also challenges related to pond maintenance, including avoiding siltation, ensuring the quality of plastic sheeting to prevent seepage, and the additional costs associated with pond upkeep. 

When successfully constructed, these ponds become valued groundwater storage structures, ultimately improving the ability of farmers to mitigate drought risks in the late season by maintaining a private store of water refreshed through their borewells. However, the widespread use of ponds risks intensifying groundwater over-abstraction, particularly in regions like Marathwada, where much of the land is rain-fed and farmers lack reliable access to dam water.

In fact, we note that the distribution of water from the Jayakwadi dam to farmers in the region is inadequate, irregular, and unequal. Rather than addressing these critical issues, the PoCRA programme prioritises individual, water conservation-centric efforts such as the construction of private ponds by medium and large farmers, thereby overlooking the need for a more comprehensive approach that views water as a shared resource to be managed collectively in an ecologically sustainable manner.

Due to its limited focus on individual productivity and long bureaucratic delays for payment of subsidies, the Climate Resilient Agriculture (CRA) approach appears to miss the primary challenges facing smallholders who are struggling with the adverse effects of climate change. Crucially, these programmes fail to consider the need to better integrate farming activities within the broader ecological and socio-economic context of the area.

Currently, the programme focuses solely on farmland as a site of production, overlooking the larger social and ecological factors that influence it. The decreasing green cover, such as minor forests across farmlands, is a significant concern, as it leads to increased water flows draining the soil from the fields. Furthermore, there has been an increasing encroachment upon local water drainage systems that connect farmlands to nallas and serve as natural drainage channels for the farmlands to make way for high-value crop cultivation. 

In light of this situation, both farmers and the state must expand their understanding of climate change and the measures required to combat it. It is essential for both parties to recognise that addressing climatic variability – especially rainfall extremes – cannot be achieved through a technology-driven and productivity-oriented approach. Instead, it is vital to move towards a holistic strategy that better incorporates social and ecological considerations, that considers farming as a collective economic and ecological activity within the larger landscape of the region.

Suhas Bhasme is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Water Policy and Governance, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and Marcus Taylor is a Professor at the Department of Global Development Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.

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